Asklemmy

43905 readers

1090 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

214

Does anyone know any Hard Sci Fi books about humans surviving without any hospitable worlds? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 9 months ago by GlitchyDigiBun@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

99 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm looking to get inspiration for my own writing. I need a hard sci fi series where earth (and earthlike worlds) are too rare, inaccessible, and/or previously spoiled beyond ability to sustain life. Bonus points if it is set on a multi-generational space station or starship without any other options and goes into detail about life support, living space, mineral mining and expansion of the station to accomodate a growing population, and daily life of it's residents.

If anyone remembers Drifter Colonies from Titan A.E., that's what's in my head.

I'm looking for The Martian levels of realism, and I'm fine with a bit of "Unobtanium" clichés if they're not core to the story.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was looking for Aurora. I also think it's right on the money. Gets into the weeds with micro ecosystems.

The idea that humans need the diverse micro ecology of earth in order to not become ill over the course of generations is pretty interesting.

[–] NielsBohron@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

The idea that humans need the diverse micro ecology of earth in order to not become ill over the course of generations is pretty interesting.

Really pretty well-supported by current science, too. I teach chemistry at a community college, so maybe I'm an outlier, but I read a ton of current research about the importance of diversity in "gut biomes" and the damaging effects of monoculture on global ecology, etc.

It seems pretty clear that even if engineers could solve the physical and chemical issues with a generation ship, the limiting constraints are almost certainly going to be biological and ecological, and KS Robinson's estimates for the upper limits seem pretty reasonable based on current knowledge